Note 106 — Chapter XVI · EDGMIATSIN AND THE ARMENIAN CHURCH

And yet the ὁμοούσιον was not incorporated into the Armenian Creed! But it does not appear that this omission was intentional. The creed already in use was allowed to stand. I confess to a feeling of astonishment, having regard to the unequivocal language in which the author of the Life attests the acceptance of the Council; but the canons could not have been much appreciated in Armenia at the time if we are to credit Koriun’s statement that he himself, with Ghevond and Eznik, brought authentic copies of them to Armenia in the fifth century (Biography of Mesrop in Langlois’ Collection, vol. ii. p. 12). Mr. F. C. Conybeare informs me that the Creed of Nice was only communicated to the Armenian diaspora in Persia and Southern Mesopotamia by the Katholikos Papken after the Council of Dvin, c. 490 A.D. It was rejected by that diaspora as in contradiction with their already established Ebionite or Adoptionist tenets (see Letter-book of the Patriarchs, MS. of the Armenian Father, St. Anthony, in Stambul).

Dr. Arshak Ter-Mikelean prints the Armenian and Nicene creeds side by side and accompanies them with some interesting remarks (Die armenische Kirche in ihren Beziehungen zur byzantinischen, Leipzig, 1892, p. 22 seq.). The statement of Agathangelus (Life of St. Gregory), that King Tiridates acted in concert with St. Gregory in making certain additions to the canons must be received with caution, although such additions do appear to have been actually made (see the note of the Mekhitarists to the Italian translation of Agathangelus, p. 196). His son, Chosroes II., appears to have come to the throne in 314. As neither Agathangelus nor Faustus gives us dates, and as the most monstrous anachronisms occur in both treatises, one may do pretty well what one likes with the chronology. I should even mistrust them when they assign a given number of years for a particular period. In the East at the present day ten years means more than one and less than twenty years; and I see no reason to credit the old historians with much greater precision of statement. That the Armenians took part in the Council of Nice is attested by Agathangelus, Faustus, Moses of Khorene, etc., and also by the list of signatures of participants in the Council:—Armeniæ majoris Aristarces, Threnius Diosponti (Von Gutschmid, Kleine Schriften, iii. 415). But we may reasonably doubt that either Tiridates or St. Gregory was alive at the time. ↑